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azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
Someone in the Discord is all "aaaaaaaa" recently because of a diagnosis in the family.

I, uh, said something about a blog post containing everything I knew about cancer.

A couple days later I had to admit that this was perhaps more of Not a blog post.

I've been doing 2000-ish words on a slow day.
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
Someone was talking about eating, and actions vs. inactions in the paradigm of DBT, and disability, and the labor of meal preparation. (Feel free to raise a hand in the comments if you'd like.)

And that got me thinking about some of my late mornings.
Note that this poem is about both preparing food, and about not eating. This is a working draft, and I might whack it around some more, but the words starting tugging on me while I was heading across the room to do something else.



Read more... )
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
This year I told myself that I was probably not doing NaNo because I didn't have the energy and didn't have any inspiration.

Belovedest's been watching the TAB 2020 Olympics and the Paralympics, and there's a particular ad that includes a smart car that's a member of the team. And that got me wondering, what with the usual headaches that go along with something "simple" like upgrading a phone ... what happens when you have to upgrade a complicated piece of equipment like a car? (This also may have been in the immediate wake of a notable Tesla incident, probably the one where the guy's car bricked itself in the middle of a lane and couldn't be pushed to the shoulder. Having had a car die on me in the middle of a not-shoulder lane, this is viscerally TERRIFYING.)

Today's Facebook DNS shenanigans underlined that.

When the internet said "DNS", I got the metaphorical popcorn, as well as sparing a moment of empathy for the poor sap who had managed to save the zone file without the A or AAA records in it, wondering what the TTL was.

At that point I did not also realize that because Facebook is so arrogant, short-sighted, and incorrectly paranoid that they use strictly in-house technology for everything, that they were boned in a way that I have not personally seen anything approaching since Virtual Hammer accidentally ended my contract on my birthday with an internal conference in the next week. I couldn't open doors. I couldn't log in to my computer. I couldn't even call the fucking help desk because my desk phone was tied to my login. (They later did something similar to a fellow with a scarily low employee ID number, and when I say "fellow" I mean "Fellow", as in he had one of the extremely rare company fellowship positions. He tried going through the system in the usual way before pulling rank, and had some really scathing reports about the experience, which I'm assuming he dropped into some relevant ears.)

Facebook basically did that to everyone internally, all at once. There was a report of needing to use an angle grinder to get into the correct part of the data center, which detail is so poetically perfect that I intentionally reject all fact-checking. https://twitter.com/pettazz/status/1445200895554228224

So I'll have to remember to bring all my experience of being caught in a bureaucratic web where nobody really checks to see what cracks there are and what/who has fallen through them. The more things are automated, the easier it is for a human to say "That's Not My Responsibility" even if it should be theirs, and the more they are forced to extreme metrics, the less they can be bothered to care about the actual people being harmed.
azurelunatic: "Are you challenging my ingenuity?"  (ingenuity)
My priorities at work are: get the participant database in reasonable working order (including the yelling at vendors), and get the process for the yearly conference in as well-documented order as I can get it.

There has been database WTF-ery. The response from the vendor is sort of shaped like "yes Reverend thank you Reverend" as I tell them that this is unexpected and not in the good way. Purple is amused.


I'm starting to apply places, and collecting my references and paperworks.

More people continue to find out and/or ask me about the status of the contractor deadline. I feel somewhat socially obligated to put a good face on it, at least to people who aren't #VirtualH, #dreamwidth, #cupcake, #adventuresofstnono, or closer. This results in scenarios like:

ajl: I've heard vague rumors to the effect that people are talking about getting us a paid Slack, but only rumors. In the future, you should probably ask [R&D IT Flashlight Guy] about that, he might be best placed to know.
MrBlueHair: Wait, "in the future" ARE YOU LEAVING US
ajl: Well, there's that contractor policy, and my team wasn't able to get me converted to full time before the deadline, barring a miracle.
MrBlueHair: ... !!! D:
ajl: :( :( :(

or

R2, the guy on my team not my else-team friend: Well, I'm headed to India to get married, see you when I get back!
AzureJ: Congratulations, and it's been a pleasure working with you.
R2: Oh, I'm coming back! At the end of February!
AzureJ: When in February?
R2: The end ... omg, you won't ... ? Where are you ... ?
AzureJ: The 16th. I don't know yet.
R2: Oh. It's been good working with you too. :(


When that happens, I tend to IM Purple with the gist of the conversation and try to not let it go from tears leaking out my eyes to actual audible sobbing. He says that long notice in situations like this is kind of torture. I'm inclined to agree, though I also appreciate it so I can prepare.

One of the things helping me keep it together is the way that I know I am cared-for and well-regarded, on my team and off, and especially amongst #VirtualH and #cupcake. Purple hugs me goodnight, shoulder-bumps me, occasionally pets my arm, and lets me take shelter next to him. I keep rediscovering that undemanding sustained physical contact with folks who don't set off my alarm bells is a thing that does me great amounts of good. (Even while the same amount of proximity to people *not* cleared for unmonitored access to my blind spots would leave me worse off.) Mr. Zune has joined #adventuresofstnono, which goes a long way towards keeping the people I cherish most from #cupcake in places I will see them regularly. (We have yet to coax radius in there.)

Recently, #adventuresofstnono have been talking about the reverse of popular internet emotional signifiers. What is the opposite of LOL? Throwing up? Crying inside? The simple D: ? This inevitably led to 8===D and its opposite, 8===D: the aghast ascii penis.


I have Scrivener set up, and have embarked upon a project which is intended to be a tropey tropey paper bag which may contain a magician's bird of definite fjord-pining status, and might also possibly -- well. So the other day on Twitter...




Naturally I hunted down the reference (like a good fishmum) and while the story was sweet and hot and I was happy to have spent a fancy coffee's worth on it, the writing quality was not what I'm accustomed to. In fact...

"I can write better than that," I groused to myself. "In fact, I've half a mind to..."

[personal profile] norabombay and [personal profile] sithjawa promptly started incorriging me.

I now have:
* working title (terrible, terrible pun)
* a possibly viable pen name
* a main pairing, several supporting couples, and some names
* a terribly on the nose pen name for the bad fanfic written by a supporting couple
* tons of incorrigement
Pray for me.

My tweets

Jul. 27th, 2015 12:05 pm
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)

My tweets

Nov. 5th, 2014 12:04 pm
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
Sexual orientation vs. the MythBusters

Read more... )
azurelunatic: A metallic blue and black horizontal-handled cane with an elastic loop at the bottom of the webbing wrist strap. (gimp)
Located the appropriate pliers. Fixed my star necklace. Hooray!

Hauled laundry down from car.

[personal profile] vass encouraged me to hunt down and read "BLIT", "comp.basilisk FAQ", and "Different Kinds of Darkness". (I gave "What Happened at Cambridge IV" a skip after reading http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf853 because I'm pretty sure I would leave yelling about stereotypes and representation.) As a result, I have no idea which character of mine has the blackwork tattoo of an almost-parrot with fractal bits, but somebody does, and I don't think they're a particularly nice person. It takes a special kind of person to read a short story about an extreme memetic hazard, and go "You know, I think I want that on my body. Permanently." Only some of those sorts of people are ones I'd like to hang out with.

I hadn't set up xkit properly on Bell. I just reinstalled the blocky thing, and blacklisted Guardians of the Galaxy, and I'm so much happier. Icon for this entry came up on the first click of the random button. Unpopular fannish opinion, including disability, abuse, and Bucky ) Combine that with the stuff about women, and you know? I don't have to see it in the theatre, and when I do hit up Tumblr, I don't have to see it there either. Yay xkit.



Oh god. It's Lovie who has the Parrot tattoo. As a tramp-stamp.



I am a grown adult, and don't need to pout over cafeteria table shenanigans. Invisible Purple was invisible; I had a pleasant lunch with part of Purple's usual table (quietly, in the corner, because I am in fact kind of shy in addition to being introverted).

Various things converged such as I was thinking about some of my youthful shenanigans and the list of people who I trust more than I trust (That Idiot) Shawn. Previous thoughts on the multi-factor slider-bar mixing board of trustedness. The various emotional fuckery, the general shenanigans, and gross physical unsafety, done unto me; no one was actually hurt ) means that actually, a hell of a lot of people are on that list. Purple happened to mention some of his weekend's entertainments. So there was a bit of chatter about trust and such.

I'm doing better with shoes than I was a few years ago. Regularly wearing shoes that were terrible for me basically destroyed my feet, such that walking barefoot on a hard surface like my somewhat springy vinyl kitchen flooring was painful and I could feel damage happening. (And the terrible shoes were the best shoes I had at the time -- I had worse ones, which accelerated the damage.) Being able to afford better shoes (and fix my really good ones) gave my feet the chance to heal. Healed feet means that I can actually sometimes wear thin foam salon sandals while walking down the concrete sidewalk and across the brick courtyard, and while I can tell I shouldn't do it all day, it's not actually unpleasant or dangerous.

Purple noticed that my fingernails were blue and sparkly! He mentioned that he'd already noticed the fingernails when I was showing off my toes. I am very pleased by being blue and sparkly. I noticed in the bathroom mirror that my bangs are starting to glitter a bit. The family genes are starting to kick in. Guide Dog Aunt is a very elegant salt-and-pepper. Aunt-Fayoumis has mostly white hair that's going rusty from her water. My dad is basically Biker Santa. So it's just been a matter of time before it's notable on me. And I'm so very happy that it's coming in silver and glittery. Silver and glittery means that my hair is its own glitter. This is the best, and it's even Kat-safe!

Connie and Mike are teasing me with something involving Mike in some sort of magically altered state of consciousness, which is weird because Mike is kind of a control freak. Which is what makes me super curious.
azurelunatic: Scissors cutting film. NaNoWriMo 2004 (Home Movies from the Cutting-Room Floor)
Home Movies from the Cutting-Room Floor babbling within.


Read more... )


In other news, one of my friends' teams at work is moving buildings. Today they had a small party in order to drink their way through some of the team-owned boozes so that they would not have to actually move them all. Having been invited, I went over there and partook of some hard, hard lemonade. Then I came back and did not stuff M&Ms up my nose.

I chatted with Purple. At one point I reached out a finger to poke him. He reached back. Then I was en garde and we fenced about his office, me standing and him in his office chair, rolling handily across the floor. He said something witty once he eventually did break through my guard. "Good fences make good neighbors," I said, and then we were giggling once more.
azurelunatic: Scissors cutting film. NaNoWriMo 2004 (Home Movies from the Cutting-Room Floor)
22:24 2014-03-16
Laundry has been accomplished. This includes actually hanging up the tops and skirts. I'm impressed with myself.

There is coffee in the refrigerator. I'm attempting to cold-brew. We'll see how that goes.

I have polished my nails. This time I used black, then a glitter with big silver chunks, little light blue bits, and a sort of blue jelly liquid. Then the top coat. Once the weird edge spills come off in the shower, I might take a picture.


23:58 2014-03-19
The nail polish has shattered and is peeling.

Tuesday had some heavy conversation in the late evening. It turned out that something fairly random at work rebooted my brain straight into some really bad state from October. I walloped it a bit, and then Purple cheered me up some too. I thanked him again tonight, and made sure that he knew that in the excessively unlikely event that he should see me in a worse state, that wasn't something that he was expected to deal with, and should call someone. That kicked off a moderately deep and meta conversation.

Naturally it didn't stay that deep for excessively long, because the concept of attempting to get to sleep while there are two people over in the next bed and one of them is giggling ensued. We unleashed a veritable staircase of witticisms; I won with "I'm trying to sleep! Can you make your penis a little less funny?"

Not being a one to waste a line like that, I started tweeting. "It's going in a book?" "... Yes. And we know just the one, too! Aww hell, I didn't know there was a third part!"

Various bits, resulting in Cutting Room Floor babbling, including a whole-cast rename. The only one to keep her name is Beatrice. )
azurelunatic: A pajama-clad small child uses a rainbow-striped cruciform parachute. From illustration of "Go the Fuck to Sleep". (go the fuck to sleep)
So there I was in the shower, pondering over refinements to the section of the NaNo that had entitled itself "Episode 19" (no, I have no idea of the significance of the number, other than it's not early in the season); it did have its own unique title, but I'm going to gloss over that bit.

So then I sat down at the keyboard to get it in there while I drip-dried.

FOOM. Out came five hundred words of outline-and-dialogue. It turns out that taking some of the themes that are currently weighing heavily on my mind and exploring them in fictional format in ways entirely unrelated to the actual situation -- right. FOOM.

So now two more characters have joined the cast. Hi, Lake. And then Mithi decides that due to the stuff, she's going to have a little chat with someone who's been hiding right in plain sight the whole time. And another. aaaa. WHERE DO THEY ALL COME FROM.
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
I wasn't sure I could even start writing Darkside Knightmares as a book, but eventually I got my head in the right place.

It has always been anime to me. Eventually it became anime from the Cracked Phoenix universe. Sometime in the past three days, it started to be the original novel that the anime is based on. (The anime may whitewash Mithi though I hope it will not; the images from the anime in my head have yet to catch up with Mithi taking on a life of her own. The first vision of her was light skinned and slender; Mithi is actually brown skinned and sturdy enough to bludgeon and block with her body. Also she is short. Miri was one of those waifish blue-haired anime ladies. No resemblance except face and maybe hair.) After the anime, there is a manga series.

Our universe may have to content itself with the book. But that is how I got my head into it.
azurelunatic: Quill writing the partly obscured initials 'AJL' on a paper. (quill)
Dear writers of fiction, we need to talk. Specifically, about use of mental illness language in a figurative fashion, such as:

Elly had a depressing job.


a rant. )

My tweets

Oct. 7th, 2013 12:01 pm
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
Read more... )

My tweets

Oct. 4th, 2013 12:00 pm
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
Read more... )</lj-cut
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
This is for a fictional situation.

I am attempting to come up with a bunch of neurological functions that are important, but not actually necessary to life, such that someone could get along without them without too much in the way of day to day medical intervention, but that they/those around them would have to make regular accommodations for the lack.

Bonus points for it being plausibly caused by having got in the way of some electricity.

I have some initial ideas, and I've opened a few tabs for wheatgoogling. Oh, my unfortunate characters.
azurelunatic: "Welcome to the Internet. (Here's your free eyespork.)" Titanium spork.  (eyespork)
In which I rediscover something about The Girl Who Owned a City, by O.T. Nelson, that failed to stick in my head from 2009, in #yuletide:


[22:42] <[personal profile] azurelunatic> ... oh dear god.
[22:42] <[personal profile] azurelunatic> I think I hate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Owned_a_City even more now.

[22:43] <strixus> and why Azz?

[22:43] <strixus> i can think of plenty of reasons why to hate that book

[22:44] <[personal profile] azurelunatic> Okay, so there's this really juicy post-apocalyptic story about a girl who manages to craft a well-armed civilization out of the wreckage.
[22:45] <[personal profile] azurelunatic> And I'm 12, very invested, and then she discovers this WONDEROUS BOOK THAT CONTAINS ALL THE LESSONS THAT SHE WILL NEED TO SOLVE HER PROBLEMS, and of course I'm very curious what it is, and then it never says and I become furious.
[22:45] <shati> i liked the girl who owned a city when i was a young girl who knew nothing of ayn rand
[22:46] <[personal profile] azurelunatic> I re-read it as a 20-something, and fly into a pagan-agnostic rage, because clearly it's the Bible.
[22:46] <shati> ...IT IS?
[22:46] <strixus> oh god
[22:46] <[personal profile] azurelunatic> AND NOW I LEARN THAT IT IS AYN RAND WHICH IS WORSE
In which alternate books are suggested and discussed. )


All this talk of books results in yet another cracky title that gets dropped into my NaNo to get it out of my head:

[23:12] <[personal profile] azurelunatic> so there's "The Dangerous Book for Boys", and "The Daring Book for Girls" --
[23:12] <[personal profile] azurelunatic> They were hanging out in Chad's room again, Max sprawled out on Chad's bed, and Chad kicked back in the desk chair reading "The Poorly-Behaved Book for Tiny Psychopaths".
[23:13] <[personal profile] alexseanchai> hee
[23:13] <Chokolatte-1955> lol

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Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺

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